Interview with Green Chamber Member: EcoMetro

Karla Kingsley, Advertising Sales Manager of EcoMetro, spills the beans on their green resource guide for six cities and why aspiring green businesses need to tell their story from the heart…

What’s green about your business and what made you decide to be green?

EcoMetro’s mission is to expand the market for sustainable businesses and products – to do this, we produce a green resource guide and coupon book that is published in 6 local markets – the East Bay, Silicon Valley/Santa Cruz, Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis/St Paul, and Denver/Boulder. The businesses that place coupons in our guides have to fit our environmental and community criteria. With the guides, we’re connecting consumers to like-minded businesses, and providing a financial incentive for people to get out and try a new local green business.

In terms of our actual business practices – our main environmental impacts as a company are the printing of our books and the airline travel of our employees. For the printing, we work with a local US-based printer, and we use the highest recycled content paper that will work with their printing presses. Also, our ink is soy-based. We also use online meetings for most of our weekly and monthly meetings, as well as employee trainings.

What’s your advice to other green businesses?

Tell your story honestly and from the heart. Consumers are definitely interested in going green, but there is still a lot of confusion out there about what “green” means, and what is really green. Be transparent with what you are doing, and use your story to engage your customers.

For businesses that aren’t green, what advice do you have for them?

“Going green” isn’t all or nothing! It’s a process. Look at what part of your business has the highest environmental impact, and look for ways to improve on that part. Or, look at what change will be the easiest to implement, and start there. Every change will help, and you can continually look for ways to green your business – it doesn’t have to happen all at once.

Why did you join the Green Chamber?

We joined the Green Chamber because we wanted the opportunity to connect with other like-minded businesses. We can provide a valuable marketing tool for green businesses to help them reach consumers, either through the coupons in our EcoMetro Guides, through display print advertising, or online advertising at ecometro.com. Additionally, we look to other green businesses to provide us with products and services. The Green Chamber is a great way to connect, network and share ideas.